More tangible results from the reforms of the kinder, gentler apartheid dictatorship of the Castros in Cuba.
Cuban prisoner of conscience Ivan Fernandez Depestre on hunger strike after beating
Ivan Fernandez Depestre
Cuban prisoner of conscience Ivan Fernandez Depestre on April 9 started a hunger strike after he was beaten by prison officials and thrown in a punishment cell, according to Cuban activist Jorge Luis Perez Garcia “Antunez.”
Fernandez, who Amnesty International has recognized as a prisoner conscience, was protesting the beating of another prisoner when he was attacked by guards at the Guamajal prison in Villa Clara province.
Antunez called on the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International and others to speak out in support of Fernandez.
Antunez said the Castro dictatorship must be held responsible for what happens to Fernandez.
Fernandez last year was sentenced to three years in prison after he was arrested in July during a protest march in Placetas.
In September, Amnesty International determined Fernandez had been jailed “solely because of his political views,” and named him as a prisoner of conscience.
“Mr. (Fernandez) was charged with ‘dangerousness’, a pre-emptive measure defined as the ‘special proclivity of a person to commit crimes’ after he was accused of ‘meeting with antisocial persons,'” Anmnesty said. “He hand no access to a lawyer during his trial and was sentenced to three years in jail on 2 August.”